Arkady Ostrovsky's The Invention of Russia won the £3,000 (about $4,400) Orwell Prize, which recognizes work that comes closest to George Orwell's ambition "to make political writing into an art," the Guardian reported.
Chair of judges Lord William Waldegrave compared the winning book with Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, saying that Ostrovsky's nonfiction title was "absolutely about the central themes that Orwell is most famous of all for... the importance of language, and how he or she who controls the language, controls the narrative. And although there are many strong and brave liberal voices in Russia, if you get control of social and traditional media, you've gone a long way to controlling the message.... It's a wonderful book and it meets the tough criterion of making political writing an art, but it is extraordinary how the theme of it is absolutely in Orwell's own tradition."
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Finalists have been announced for the 2016 Trillium Book Awards, which "recognize excellence, support marketing and foster increased public awareness of the quality and diversity of Ontario writers and writing." The winning authors, who will be named June 22, receive C$20,000 (about US$15,390) and the publisher $2,500 for marketing and promotion. The Trillium Book Award for Poetry winner gets $10,000 ($2,000 to the publishers). Check out the English and French language finalists here.
